Keyboarding For Kids – 4 Important Keyboarding Shortcuts For Students

Finally, An Easy Way to Get Your Students Keyboarding This Fall!

This post completes my first Summer Google Basics Series– “Keyboarding For Kids“. You will find a link below to my complete set of 30 slides to help you to get your kids set on the road to keyboarding competency! I have taken literally 100’s of hours of teaching and editing time to perfect my lessons. In my slides-“Keyboarding For Kids” I have everything you need to get your kids started using this time-tested balance of skills.

*Why Good Keyboarding is Important

*Video lessons and examples of what good keyboarding actually looks like

*Daily Agenda and Table of Contents to Stay on Track

*Keyboarding Standards

*Training Diagrams for the two Commonly Used Keyboards Including a Chromebook Keyboard

*Tips & Tricks to Get Your Little Techies to sign in on their Google account in the first place

*Keyboarding “I Can” Statements

*The Four Most Commonly Used Shortcuts

*How to Use Tying.com lessons, Scoreboard Data and Games in both teacher and student view

Keyboarding For Kids – 4 Most Important Shortcuts For Kids

When I teach my 2nd-4th graders how to type, I try to balance keyboarding skills with functional use skills. Basically, I want my students to have a strong foundation of keyboarding/typing skills to build on but at the same time allow them to have practical knowledge of the keys available to them on any keyboard and their function. For our “Little Techies”, there is more to consider when teaching students efficient keyboard use. It is true that Common Core Standards may indicate keyboarding competencies are measured by speed and accuracy, however, we also need to build “Keyboard Awareness” so that our students will be able to use their devices in practical ways, focusing on productivity and not just typing speed scores.

As my students begin to find “Home Row” and increase familiarity with their device keyboard, this is also a great time to introduce four of the most commonly used Keyboard Shortcuts. First, I use the Tortoise and the Hare story to illustrate the meaning of the word ~ Shortcut. (*See image above.) Then I explain that there are combinations of keys we can use to perform certain tasks more quickly. My kids like to call Keyboard Shortcuts “Hacks”. While this term is probably not entirely accurate in the tech world, my students still have an affinity for the special powers they possess knowing these four important keyboard shortcuts. As I have helped many kids get started using G Suite, I have found these four to be the most commonly used.

So, keeping this in mind, I want to talk about the four most important keyboard shortcuts that I have found our kids will need to know after they have been introduced to basic keyboarding skills.

4 Most Important Keyboard Shortcuts For Beginners:

1. Ctrl + c = Copy

2. Ctrl + v = Paste

3. Ctrl + z = Undo

4. Ctrl + Switcher Key = Screenshot

Why Take a Screenshot?

*Safety- Capture a Message for evidence of suspicious contact

*Use for giving directions

*Save and Share Screen as an Image

3 Types of Screenshots:

*Whole Screen- ctrl + Switcher Key

*Partial Screen – ctrl + Shift + Switcher Key

I use “Partial Screen” the most so I do not have to crop it later which is selected by dragging a Cross-Hair that displays after the keyboard shortcut. My Slides have a “How-To” video to demonstrate taking a Partial Screenshot.

*Entire Page – There is an extension that allows you to take a screenshot of the entire webpage, even beyond the viewable screen. Chrome Webstore- “Awesome Screenshot Minus”. There are other extensions that have the same function but those extensions have questionable privacy practices and this one allows you to draw on the screen, supporting touchscreen devices. Pretty nice!

Next Step: Where to Find My Screenshot After I Take It?

My slides-“Keyboarding Basics For Kids” have a “How-To” video showing you how to access your screenshot from your Downloads after you take it and how to change your default settings in Chrome to save your screenshots to another location if necessary. I have changed my default screenshots to be saved directly to my Drive so I do not take up all of the temporary internal storage on my Chromebook.

Other Special Keys Students need to know:

Escape

Enter/Return

Space Bar

Use of the Shift keys for Capitals and “Upper Row Symbols” above the numbers

Purchase Complete Set of Slides

“Keyboarding Basics For Kids” Slides for $9.95 is a complete collection of 30 slides from this 5 part series to teach your kids how to begin keyboarding basics. My Slides are a product of MANY hours of work in order to break procedures down into the best basic-bite-sized pieces, offering you kid-friendly language, all the extras like videos, links and even the images you see throughout this entire series so that you may easily use the slides in your classroom.

My New Fall Series will include–Google Search Basics for Kids, Chromebook Webcam Creations, and Creating Comics with Toys!

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